One Minute Longer
by tearlessNevermore
Summary: Normal people do not last long in the Grand Line. Ardan Lacrimoso is well aware of this. Unfortunately, finding a way back is made rather complicated by not knowing how or why he was dropped into One Piece in the first place. The solution, then, is to become extraordinary. He just has to hold out a little bit longer... A One Piece Self-Insert Fic.


_In retrospect, I should have first smelled a rat when I passed out in the middle of eye surgery. That's the last thing I can remember, anyway._

 _Everything had gone blurry. I tried to blink, but nothing happened. Then even the unintelligible smears of colour faded away entirely. All quiet, voices to whispers, whispers to silence. That clean, sterile smell - you know, that smell that all medical rooms seem to have? - just stopped. The lights went out, which was the part where I started panicking. I wanted to get my vision_ fixed _, not_ destroyed!

 _Then I started to smell stuff again, specifically the sea. The sea has a very distinctive scent, you know? Most of the adjectives used to describe the sea are recursive, they originate from someone trying to describe the sea in the first place. I think. I'm not a linguist._

 _After scent returned to me, sound was right on its heels, which consisted of a bunch of people running around and shouting. It was still indistinct._

 _While I was waiting for sight to take its turn, I discovered that I'd missed a spot in the running order of senses._

 _Tactile sensation made itself known by means of something slamming into my ribs. To this day, I have no clue how or why none of them cracked. Either way, my eyes finally returned to full working order in the midst of me hacking up what felt like half a lung, mixed with a few gallons of seawater._

 _When my sense of taste did return a short while later, it turned out that, based on the sour and bitter aftertaste, I'd vomited as well. Small blessings, I suppose, that I only had to experience hacking up my lunch in retrospect._

 _Pretty much the first thing I saw, after the heavily stained, wooden deck, was a fluttering flag. Now, if it had been almost any other flag, then it would probably have taken me a fair while longer to clue into where I was, but this was one of the rare few that was distinctive enough for me to recognise it on sight._

 _And that, my friends (and foes), is how I, Ardan Lacrimoso, ended up in the world of One Piece aboard the ship of Monkey D-_

"Bwahahahaha! Put some back into it, shrimp! You've got work to do if you want to be a Marine!"

"Sir, with respect, don't you think that pushing him like this, so soon after he recovered from nearly drowning, might _not_ be a good idea?"

"Of course not! I mean, of course it is! ...Whatever. That just means that conquering that weakness must come first!"

"Um, okay, but… that said, he's going to catch hypothermia at this rate. Can't we reel him in already?"

"So what? Then he'll just have to learn how to fight the cold as well! Get some ice ready!"

"As you wish, Vice Admiral sir..."

 _-Garp, aka Garp the Fist, aka the Hero of the Marines. Father of Dragon the Revolutionary and the grandfather of Luffy, Ace and Sabo. The one-time rival of the Pirate King and one of the strongest people in the world. The man has earned a LOT of titles._

 _I'm half-convinced that something went wrong and the surgery damaged my brain; the other half is waiting for the other shoe to drop. Another shoe, that is._

 _Regardless, I had ended up in a deathworld with next to no applicable skills. On the plus side, I had ended up in the care of Garp, one of the Marines' top instructors. On the downside, I had ended up in the care of Garp, one of the Marines' top instructors._

~tN~tN~tN~

 _Waking up in the infirmary two days in a row set a bad precedent for my stay in the Grand Line._

 _The first time, I'd woken up confused, with only a vague idea of my situation. Getting confirmation that, yes, this is the Grand Line had… not helped, exactly, but it had given me a starting point._

 _After that, Garp had taken over and decided that a fragile thing like myself would not survive long alone and taken it upon himself to toughen me up. His words, not mine, though I couldn't argue with his assessment._

 _And so began my first day. With breakfast, of course._

~tN~tN~tN~

"RISE AND SHINE! UP AND AT 'EM! BE IN THE MESS IN TWO MINUTES OR YOUR FOOD'S MINE! _BWAHAHAHA!_ "

The roaring in my ear sent me scrambling out of my designated bunk, tripping over myself and falling to the floor.

Scraped knees are a great wake-up call, especially in combination with an enthusiastic Vice-Admiral. Then the words sank in.

Marines, which I sorta was one, slept in light clothes so they could be ready quickly in the case of battle. All I needed was to pull on trousers, then socks, then _where were the freaking shoes, I know I put them down here_ — oh, there they were.

I stuck my feet into the shoes—boots really—and tried not to focus too much on what my fumbling fingers were doing as they went through the motions of knotting the laces. Then I clambered to my feet, trying not to stumble, and dashed through the corridors of the ship. One hand came up to adjust glasses that… weren't there. Old habits.

Then there was the doorway of the mess hall, clatter and chatter leaking out. I reached the doorframe and- stopped.

A lot of people filled up the mess hall that morning. Groups of Marines, all neatly attired in white uniforms. They sat there with their heaps of bacon and eggs, talking, laughing, eating, gesturing wildly along with whatever story they were telling. I didn't have a place here; neither a place to sit, nor people to sit with. I didn't know how they'd react, if they'd shun me or—more worryingly—try and befriend me. I didn't know where to go or what to do or what _not_ to do or—

"BWAHAHAHAHA! LOOKS LIKE YOU MADE IT ON TIME, RUNT! COME IN AND TAKE A SEAT! YOU HAVE FIVE MINUTES TO EAT!"

Garp waved at me from the end of one of the tables, a large chunk of meat-on-the-bone clenched in his other hand. Having caught my attention, he gestured to the empty bench to his right and resumed stuffing his face, now with both hands. On his plate was a literal _mountain_ of breakfast that took me a few moments to process.

To his left sat a Marine in a nice jacket and hat, Bogard, whose plate lay empty and his cutlery neat. His shaded gaze aimed directly across the table to the only place other than Garp's that still had food on it. My place… or, the place Garp had apparently reserved for me, at any rate.

 _That's what Garp considers a reasonable breakfast!?_

The plate was stacked high with greasy protein. Thankfully there weren't any shanks of meat like the ones Garp was chowing down on… but there _were_ a half-dozen slabs of bacon, a few ladlefuls of egg, what must have been half a freaking loaf's worth of toast… Yeah, there was no way I'd get it all eaten in 5 hours, much less five minutes, regardless of how hungry I was.

First I had to get there. _Eyes on the food. Don't look anyone in the eye. Walk like you're supposed to be there, which you are…_ Then, at last, I'd reached my chair and sat down. I stared dumbly at the near-mountain of food, reached for the cutlery (much more solid than I was used to), and began excavating.

"Got the cooks to give you a bit extra," Garp said amidst the inhalation of mouthful after mouthful of meat, _somehow speaking clearly even when there should literally be no room left to speak with_. "Figured you'd need it, as skinny as you are. Gonna be pretty busy too. Come find me on deck once you're done here."

Then his plate was empty and Garp went striding away, switching from eating to business in one smooth motion so quick that I didn't quite catch the transition. Bogard stood as well but lingered a moment. He pulled a book from his jacket and set it down next to me. It was a journal, by the looks of it, a blank brown leather cover with a lock on the front. With a _tink,_ he set a small key on a cord down next to it.

I blinked at it and gave him a questioning look.

"You told us your head was a bit fuzzy on the details of what had happened before you fell," Bogard explained, his voice higher than I'd expected and somewhat weary, likely from long years of having to explain everything, repeatedly, to his immediate superior. "The doc suggested keeping a journal in case your short-term memory suffers any further lapses. That, and taking notes of what we tell you will save us having to repeat ourselves too much. There's a lot to take in, after all."

"Thank you," I said on reflex, dropping my cutlery to pick up the key-on-a-cord and hang it around my neck. "If you don't mind me asking though..."

Bogard had been about to walk away, but paused and turned to look at me again, his head tilted quizzically. I had to admire his patience for waiting while I fumbled with how to word my question for a few moments.

"How, ah, private is the journal?"

Bogard snorted, amused.

"You aren't under arrest, kid, and you're either the best or the worst spy in the world with how nervous you're acting. Nobody has any reason to snoop and anyone who does would have to deal with the Vice-Admiral if he finds out. Write whatever you want, it's your journal."

Bogard left, presumably to find Garp. Though maybe not. I didn't know what his duties entailed, beyond that he was apparently Garp's assistant or something. Second in command? Right-hand man? Even though he'd been seated on Garp's left?

Needless to say, I didn't finish the food in time.

~tN~tN~tN~

 _Given that it's the mess hall of Garp's personal ship, I have my doubts that it's the Marines' standard issue. The room is the length of the width of the ship and wide enough to hold three long tables, each with a matching bench on either side. The ceiling is high, about five or six times Bogard's height, likely to accommodate the wildly-varied heights and species in the Marines._

 _Three tables, each capable of comfortably accommodating around twenty Marines. In a pinch, maybe even around thirty. Marines work, sleep and eat in shifts so, at breakfast, on that first morning, there were only fifteen or so others there while I struggled to swallow my food. I didn't count, exactly._

 _Somewhere between Garp's enthusiastic welcome, the mountain of food (I'm aware that I'm repeating the point, but the sheer quantity bears repetition), and the receipt of the journal I'm writing in at this very moment, I was able to successfully ignore the other people in the room until I ran out of time and fled the mess, journal in hand and a significant portion of my breakfast remaining on my plate._

 _That, according to the clock on the wall, had been at half-past seven in the morning. From then until I woke up in the infirmary that evening I didn't have a moment to rest or reflect. It was to be a long and rather strenuous day._

 _First up was a series of lessons delivered by Bogard on basic seamanship. There was quite the selection of jargon, mostly unfamiliar, to learn; a tour of the ship with accompanying explanations of where I was and wasn't allowed to be completed; and an assortment of knots and sail positions to memorise, which I have detailed at the back of this journal._

 _That took up a few hours in the morning. It was… not unpleasant, as ways of passing time go. Lectures and note-taking have traditionally not gone well for me, but Bogard was willing to explain things and repeat himself when I fell behind his lessons. I'm not sure if that's the_ standard _Marine procedure, but I'd bet not. It probably wasn't standard procedure for such lessons to be given one-on-one either, though, but since it was to my benefit, I wasn't going to complain._

 _At midday, Bogard broke off the lessons to bring me back to the mess hall for dinner. It was slightly busier than it had been at breakfast, so I'd grabbed a bowl of stew and sat in a corner. Nobody came over to sit next to me, thankfully, so I was able to review the notes I'd made while I ate in peace._

 _Purposeful memorisation has never been my strong point, but failing to know these topics would likely incur a more severe penalty than a failed test grade, so I made an effort. Regrettably, I was not assigned to Bogard for more lessons after the meal. Instead, Garp decided to begin whipping me into shape. Not with an actual whip. Thankfully._

 _We went to the… quarter_ _ **-**_ _deck (?), where he had cleared some space for us. A few Marines dawdled every now and then to watch Garp putting the runt (me!) through his paces but, for the most part, it was just Garp and I. Oh, and Bogard stood nearby, fielding questions from, and issuing orders to, other Marines._

 _The bare planks were hard, but I got used to that pretty quick. The Grand Line had decided to shine that afternoon and the unforgiving sun beat down on me without a moment's pause. Nobody else seemed to be bothered by it. They just bustled about, calling to each other and running to and fro. More memorable was how the deck tasted of salt from the constant waves splashing over the sides, and from the sweat that sluiced off of me as the afternoon went on._

~tN~tN~tN~

"Okay, that's enough of those, for the moment," Garp declared, allowing me to drop to the deck. "Now that you've warmed up, we can begin the proper training. Take ten minutes, then we can start! Bwahahahaha! For someone so weak you've kept going for quite a while!"

About three hours had passed since dinner and Garp had made a point of following up on his word. He started me on a series of stretches that I vaguely recognised from long-abandoned karate lessons, then moved onto a routine of push-ups, sit-ups, crunches, squats, jumping jacks and others that I didn't have names for.

I had to do twenty of each, and to start all over again if I did one wrong. He gave me a five-minute break every two sets. I was red in the face, gasping and wheezing by the time I'd gone through the first twenty of all the warm-ups, and I ached in about a dozen different places. Sweat dripped from my forehead into my eyes, which really stung until someone passed me a bit of cloth to tie around my forehead.

Then Garp put me through another set of stretches, which eased the pain building in some of my muscles a bit. I didn't remember seeing him put Coby and Helmeppo or Luffy and his brothers through those stretches, but Oda wasn't fond of training arcs, so presumably, it happened off-screen. Off-panel. Whatever. Or maybe One Piece natives were monstrous enough not to need them.

That lasted a good chunk into the first hour. After that, Garp made me do them all again, in sets of thirty. That hurt, a lot. By the time Garp called for me to stop, I was near the point of collapse and could barely stay upright through another set of stretches. I was too tired to even care that it had apparently just been a prelude to the "actual" training.

"Alright, break's over!"

I didn't quite get back to my feet fast enough for Garp's preferences, judging by the grip that closed over my shoulder and upper back. _Damn, Garp's hands were huge!_

I couldn't remember the last time I'd been held aloft by someone so easily. Being pulled out of the water by Garp the day before didn't count; I was insensate at the time.

In any case, Garp swung me around until I was upright before setting me back on my feet, where I managed to stay, rather than crumple back to the deck. When my vision cleared from being swung about, I was looking straight at the mast.

Garp's hand gripped me once more, this time by the head and - gently, by his standards, at least - redirected it until I was looking straight _up_ the mast.

"You have an hour to climb the mast 100 times," Garp announced, grinning widely. My heart sank. If I had been fully rested then I _might_ have been able to climb the mast in five minutes, probably taking just as long to come back down.

"Without using your hands," Garp added, as if as an afterthought. Instructions given, he sat down with a bag of something, possibly doughnuts, that he pulled from his jacket. Apparently he was planning on spectating.

And that was that. An hour later, I'd tried a dozen different variations of wrapping my legs around the mast, trying to grip it between my knees, even attempting to grip a rope between my teeth (which got me a light swat on the head from Bogard and an admonishment not to be so stupid), all to nothing.

The most I'd accomplished was to hold myself off of the deck for a few seconds at a time before crashing back down and collecting more bruises on my sternum.

"Well, that's an hour up… I thought you'd do it a couple of times at the least..." Garp sounded genuinely disconcerted. I guessed he'd expected me to be a bit hardier than I was. "Well, we'll get you there! Just you wait and see! You'll just have to work even harder! Bwahahahahahaha!"

Twenty minutes later found me standing on the quarter-deck again with my back to the aft of the ship, Garp facing me with a pile of (non-explosive, I hoped) cannonballs by each hand in a crude mimicry of his usual battle setup.

"Alright, let's try something else. You don't need strength for this, you just gotta get outta the way." Garp's grin stretched his lips up again as he plucked a cannonball from each pile and hefted them effortlessly. "Ready… set… DODGE!"

He wasn't throwing them at full speed. That was the first thought that occurred to me. The second was _damn, he's accurate_. I hit the deck almost immediately, rolling and trying to scramble back to my feet, and even then it was a close call. The first ball had sailed neatly through where my chest had been a hair-of-a-second beforehand while the second trailed slightly lower to match that same target, but mid-dive.

I was halfway to my feet again when the third ball connected with my shoulder, shooting darts of pain across my back and sending me sprawling back towards the railing. Long forgotten instincts from a childhood exploration of gymnastics got my legs in a position that let me stumble back to my feet with the last of the momentum.

The fourth cannonball connected solidly with my chest and nearly knocked me overboard. I worried that I'd cracked most, if not all, of my ribs. Garp had enough mercy to let me catch my breath after that one. For five seconds. Then he loosed another cannonball, lobbing it on an arc that carried it towards me just slow enough for me to follow its path.

I tracked it for a moment, fixated on the ball and nearly forgetting that I had to dodge. This time, instead of a wild dive, I side-stepped it, letting it splash down in the ship's wake. The sixth ball clipped my forearm when I tried to repeat the feat, but I managed to avoid getting knocked down or back, so I counted it as a win.

I lost track of the numbers after that. Each thrown ball came in just a shade faster than the last, but I was getting more accustomed to the timing. Not enough to dodge every cannonball, but by the time that Garp had exhausted his stockpile I'd avoided slightly more than I'd not.

~tN~tN~tN~

 _The, ah, "dodgeball" game somewhat reaffirmed my confidence in Garp as a training instructor. After the fiasco that was the attempted mast-climbing, I had feared that the rest of his exercises would be similar feats demanding greater strength and durability than I physically possessed._

 _However painful dodging (or, more accurately,_ failing _to dodge) the cannonballs had been, it was well within what I was able to do and I had improved noticeably by the end of the session, though I had no doubt that the difficulty was to be increased in any further exercises of that nature._

 _So it was that I returned to Garp after a break for a quick bite of bread and drink of water (read: lots of water), hopeful that the next exercise would be similarly educational. While I did, technically, learn a lot, it wasn't as immediately useful as the dodgeball. Nor anywhere near as enjoyable as the mast-climbing._

~tN~tN~tN~

"Sorry, Garp sir, but you want me to _what!?_ "

In spite of my rehydration, my voice was still raspier than usual when Garp had finished explaining his next 'lesson'.

"So, you do have a voice after all, runt. I was beginning to wonder." If Garp was put-off by my reaction, he sure didn't show it. It also occurred to me that I'd lapsed into silence ever since I'd finished my lessons with Bogard. "And yes, I am. Don't worry, you'll be fine."

My newly-honed evasion skills were entirely inadequate to escape Garp grabbing me and pulling tight a rope around my waist. He carried me over to the railing that overlooked the stern.

"Remember, we'll pull you out in an hour, but if you can swim back by yourself then you can climb out any time you want! _But!_ Don't try and just pull yourself back up, or I'll just let out more rope! Good swimming!"

So saying, Garp tossed me into the sea. The water smacking me in the face nearly had me gasping and swallowing a mouthful of the Grand Line, but I held my mouth closed.

Eyelids squeezed shut against the sting of the saltwater, I bobbed back to the surface and treaded water for a moment before daring to open my eyes and mouth again. I was already thirty metres behind the ship.

Logically, I knew that the sea wasn't terribly cold, not in the grand scheme of things. But I was still shivering and very aware that _I was swimming in the freaking Grand Line_ , home of Sea Kings, Krakens, and Oda knew what else.

I swam after the ship, a sloppy breaststroke that I occasionally got the timing wrong on and, as a result, nearly ingested a mouthful of water. For the first few minutes, I was fine. After ten minutes, I was getting tired. At eleven and a half minutes, the rope was pulled taut and I was jerked around in the water, nearly going under again before the rope slackened.

It got worse. I tried a front crawl and even a vague attempt at a dolphin kick, but never made any progress on catching up to the ship.

Every five minutes or so after the first time, I'd fall behind a bit more, and more rope would be let out.

I'd been fully-clothed when Garp threw me in and now the soaked cloth was pasted to my limbs and stomach, dragging in the water and pulling me under. It was a good thing that Garp had made me leave the journal aside before starting his training or it'd surely have been ruined.

I lost track of time. I could hear the occasional shout from the ship, whether from Garp or another Marine I couldn't tell, but my ears were too waterlogged to understand what was being said.

At some point, it began to get dark and something hard hit me in the water. Then another, and another. I blinked water out of my eyes and strained to focus, eventually making out a few glinting panes floating by me, past me, around me. Ice.

I'd started shivering at some point, but wasn't cold anymore. Instead, I felt oddly warm, my clothes stiff instead of sopping. I was tired, so tired.

My eyes closed.

~tN~tN~tN~

 _There are many ways of learning new things. The most preferable of these is to learn under the guidance of an experienced tutor. That way, the learning is structured and can take you beyond what you would be capable of by yourself. It is well-suited and advisable for the acquisition of skills and knowledge._

 _A more painful one is education by experience._

 _Nearly drowning in the Grand Line, especially with a dose of 'mild' hypothermia thrown in, is_ quite _the experience. It was the first time I'd come face-to-face with death since entering the world of the One Piece—the first time my limits had been truly tested and been found wanting._

 _It wasn't like the mast-climbing exercise._ That _was simply beyond me, the gate too high for me to clear. It was frustrating because I couldn't even begin to attempt it. Being dragged behind the ship was a different matter. I could swim, not especially well, but enough to stay afloat and do a few lengths of a swimming pool. The exercise was something I could attempt._

 _I failed and nearly died, not because of a lack of skill, but a sheer lack of capability. A lack of strength, of stamina and endurance. I'm fairly sure that many of the Marine grunts on the ship would have been unable to complete the exercise, but, going by the word of the ship's doctor afterwards,_ they _wouldn't have had to have been pulled out before it was done, either, even with the fall in temperature._

 _I was weak, on a fundamental level. That was the first thing that I learned from that lesson. I'd known it before, intellectually, but that experience had hammered home the reality of it._

 _If I wanted to reach the level where I could_ _survive_ _live in this world, to reach the point where I could survive Marineford or even any of the hundreds of lesser battles, then I'd have to work twice as hard as everyone else, constantly._

 _And it still wouldn't be enough._

 _I didn't have the technological skills of Usopp or Nami or Franky. I had no Devil Fruit or Haki. At the risk of sounding like a cliché, I was armed with nothing more than my wits and my knowledge. The former were as unprepared for my predicament as my body was, the latter was incomplete and liable to deteriorate with time._

 _But, in spite of all that, I was still alive. The next day, I reported to Garp for more training and went through_ most _of it all over again. And he gave it to me. Even though I didn't get any further up the mast that day or the day after._

 _It didn't occur to me at first, but Garp doesn't train just any randomer that crosses his path. Coby and Helmeppo had had to impress him before he trained them properly. Not with their skill or strength, but their resolve._

 _Maybe the first day was just out of curiosity to see what the boy who fell from the sky, with nothing but a mumbled tale of an unknown Sky Island to his name, was capable of. Maybe Garp was more capable of subtlety than I gave him credit for and was fully aware that the mast and the swimming were beyond me._

 _Maybe what he really wanted to know was when or if I would break; if I would give up. I didn't. And he continued training me at his usual breakneck pace. Never to the point of collapse again (I think he was too scared of his doctor), but still far harder than I expected to be able to survive._

 _That was just my training with Garp though. After a few days, Bogard began putting me on the work rosters in the mornings. This involved me scrubbing the deck, washing dishes in the mess, carrying stuff around (nothing too heavy though, as I was still the weakest person onboard), various other menial chores like that. His lessons were less frequent, though every few days he'd still come looking for me, tell me to fetch my journal, and start explaining some new aspect of the operation of a Marine vessel or about the world as a whole._

 _That was my life for the first few weeks. Dull, repetitive chores, and occasional lessons from Bogard, all rounded off by near bone-breaking training from Garp. Every night, I went to bed sore, occasionally bleeding._

 _But I was improving. Slowly, but surely. It was hard to gauge my gradually-increasing levels of strength, but I was holding out longer and longer in Garps' tests of endurance. I was avoiding three-quarters of his cannonballs, though he kept increasing the speed, and managed to get three metres up the mast on my best attempt._

 _And every night, when I retired to my bunk, my eyes closed._

 _And I was back there again._

~tN~tN~tN~

Cold. So cold it had looped back around and become fire.

Empty. Nothing in my lungs, but still they felt full to the brim, unable to fit anything else in.

Sound pounded in my ears, shaking my brains like a screaming rock concert. But I couldn't actually hear a thing.

I was turned over, pushed and pulled and generally manipulated like a ragdoll. With all the mobility that implied.

Lots of things were happening, but none of them felt like they were happening to _me_.

It was… someone else's problem. I was tired.

 _Why?_

Somewhere, fathoms above me, eyelids twitched in an approximation of a slow blink.

 _Why can't I do it?_

Tired, tired, thoughts began to connect, gears began to spin again.

 _What if nobody else will do it?_

A picture began to take shape, a blurry form behind filthy glass. It showed a person lying down, going to sleep. Not waking up, even while water rose up around them, swallowing them.

 _What if I have to do it?_

 _What if I want to do it?_

 _What must I do?_

 _What can I do?_

I tried to reach out, to break through the glass. To wipe away the dirt, to reach the person on the other side. To do- to do _something_.

I didn't have a hand.

But the glass still broke.

It was quiet, nobody around to see me clawing at the empty air above me in the brightly-lit infirmary.

The clock on the wall declared the time to be 8:34, though I couldn't tell if it was morning or evening.

I let my arm go limp again.

My whole body was sore, every muscle aching. My lungs complained loudly, and my throat stung with every breath.

I had nearly drowned, nearly been frozen. But, even after that, after I'd been pulled back onboard and treated, there had been a moment when I felt like, if I had just laid there, I wouldn't have woken up.

I'd nearly given up. But I hadn't, and I was still alive.

And I was scared.

I'd never come anywhere close to dying before. But on the _first freaking day_ on the Grand Line, I'd nearly bitten it.

That was what scared me. Not Blackbeard, not Akainu, not any of the Warlords or Emperors. They were terrifying, but it was a distant, abstract fear. This was a world that I didn't belong in, a world in which those who were unable to fight for what they believed in would die. Survival of the fittest, and I was definitely not the fittest.

I checked my breathing, stopping mid-gasp. At some point, I'd begun hyperventilating. I forced myself to take deep, steady breaths.

My father's usual advice was to compare a big problem to eating an elephant, one bite at a time. The metaphor didn't make a whole pile of sense to me. It assumed that every step of the problem was manageable, that the quantity wouldn't increase or shift unexpectedly.

But it would suffice, for the moment. One bite, one step, at a time.

I didn't have any dreams or hopes to fight for here. I wasn't a Straw Hat. I wasn't even like Coby or Helmeppo. All I wanted to do was _not die_. To not face that dirty glass again.

I didn't want to give up.

It wasn't a dream, but it'd have to do.

I wouldn't give up.

~tN~tN~tN~

 _Always the same darkness, the same panic, the same resolution._

 _I wouldn't give up._

 _It became my mantra each day. Every morning, after every meal, every job, every lesson, every exercise, everything._

 _I won't give up._

 _Because failure scares me. Dying scares me._

 _I've never been truly scared before. Worried, nervous, stressed—yes. But never have I gotten up scared, eaten meals scared, worked scared, gone to sleep scared._

 _And, in the middle of all this, I'm alone. No family, no friends. Nobody I can confide in, save for this journal. And, as appreciative as I am of such a patient confidant, paper is a poor substitute for living flesh and blood._

 _I'm not sure what will happen next. Garp likely intends to drop me off at a Marine Base once I meet his standards, but I'm not sure when that would be. If that's even what he intends at all. Maybe I'm just a new project to pass the time in between stops._

 _This marks the end of my first week. I would have put pen to paper on my thoughts sooner but, well, I've been busy, to say the least. And distracted. If I hadn't been reminded to keep a personal record I probably wouldn't have remembered at all._

 _I'm not sure what I'll do. The safest thing to do would be to leave once we reach port and find passage to one of the quieter Blues. But, somehow, I don't think that'd work. Even if I could get there safely, in a world I've never traveled through before, I'm not certain I could manage to stay completely passive._

 _Could I really stand by while Blackbeard makes his grab for power? A little bit of information goes a long way, delivered to the right person at the right time. I'd always be tempted to meddle, no matter how much I tried to stay out of things._

 _And Garp would be disappointed, I think. Whatever it is about me that's caught and kept his interest, I have a sinking feeling that he'll keep an eye on me no matter what I try and do._

 _For the moment, I'll keep working, keep training and learning. There are still some things I can do now. Maybe. Beyond the fact that we're somewhere in Paradise, I'm not sure where we are, which could make trying to help anyone kinda difficult. What I_ do _know is_ when _I am. Roughly. Even if I could recall every detail, One Piece's timeline is kinda vague on the specifics._

~tN~tN~tN~

 **SPADE PIRATES ESCAPE VALIANT MARINES!**

Garp was wearing a most unusual expression every time he looked at the headline. Every few seconds his eyes would drift back to the newspaper, delivered a few minutes earlier by a News Coo while I rested between two bouts of training. Each time, his face would scrunch up like he wasn't sure if he was supposed to glare, grin or cry.

I knew why Garp was reacting the way he was. Ace, captain of the Spade Pirates, was his adoptive grandson, after all. As proud as Garp must have been to see him doing well for himself and taking names, he had to be itching to pound the young man's head in for becoming a pirate.

And, possibly, just a bit scared for his grandson being so visibly in the public eye, where someone might connect him to his father, the Pirate King. Which, since this _was_ Garp I was dealing with, probably just fed into his anger.

My musings over Garp's emotional dilemma were a nice distraction from my own thoughts, which were mainly _when was I on the timeline!?_

If the Spade Pirates were only a recent occurrence, then that meant that I was several years before the canon start. I couldn't remember if Ace set off 3 or 2 years before Luffy, though.

I had time.

 _I had time_.

Time to train, to gain strength, experience and connections. Time to make plans. Time to mess things up.

The past week, I'd been operating under the impression that sooner or later we'd be sent towards East Blue to collect Coby and Helmeppo. Well, technically we'd be sent to collect _Morgan_ , but the mismatched duo would end up as our actual passengers.

It had seemed simple, almost, to just wait for the opportunity to slip into the flow of Canon and start making adjustments to my liking. Or, at least, that _had_ been the closest thing to a plan for making changes that I'd come up with.

But waiting several years for that? No, I didn't have that kind of patience.

But I couldn't just sit idle either…

"Something bothering you, kid?" Garp said, apparently bored of trying not to look at the newspaper.

"I'm just… trying to figure out what I want to do," I said, almost surprising myself at how easily it came out. I didn't have any particular reason to hide the general details from Garp, though the more worrisome issues would definitely have to be kept quiet.

"What you want to do, eh?" Garp straightened up, as though about to deliver a speech, then stopped. I fancied I saw his eyes flickering towards the headline again. He… didn't quite slump or deflate, but he lost some of the surety he had radiated just a moment previously. Garp just stood there for a moment, uncharacteristically quiet, before starting to speak again.

"Here's the thing... you never know where the sea will take you. You can set your course and steer your ship, but the Grand Line could blow you clear over the Red Line if she so chooses. In life, you can make plans and hope for the best, but you can't control everything. Can't do anything but prepare for the riptide, the unexpected breeze that changes it all.

"So, find something you can protect with your own fists. Find something you can fight for, no matter how hard it can get. You've got fight in you, getting up each day, even as weak as you are. You just need to find somewhere to put it to use."

I had to blink a few times. It was good advice in general, but from Garp, it was almost profound. Unfortunately, it was only re-affirming what I already knew.

"That's good advice sir, and I intend to do so, but I was thinking a bit more literally and immediately. As in, where should I go?"

It was Garps' turn to blink. Then he threw back his head and laughed, a deep, throaty guffaw. When the laughter ended, he spun abruptly, pulling me up by one arm and turning me to face the sea.

"Kid, I'll be honest with you. I'd like you to join the Marines. Bogard says you're a quick learner and you've got some spirit and a half in you. I reckon you'd go far in the Marines. We could help you find that something to hold onto and protect.

"But, it isn't for everyone. The sea is a vast place—there's space for all sorts of folks. You seem like a good kid. Whatever you want to do, I'll help you do it, Marine or not. Ah… within reason, of course. If you're planning on becoming a pirate or joining the Revolution… then I'd have to arrest you.

"But you don't have to choose right now. You're a hard worker, but you're still scrawny right now. Stick around a while, I'll teach you a few things. What do you say?"

I looked out at the blue sea, so different from the one I used to know.

Then I looked at Garp. I could guess what he was thinking, why he was doing this.

It didn't matter, not really.

"I think I will, for now."

~tN~tN~tN~

 _I shall have to take precautions to prevent this log from being read by others who may abuse the knowledge held within. But if you are reading this in my original world and do not understand what I am referring to, allow myself to make myself clear: I have seen this world played out in story form, pored over certain minutiae and daydreamed for hours on end about exploring it._

 _Although, as I set these words to paper, I have lived for only the scantest of days in this world, I can already assure you of one fundamental truth. Fiction cannot compare to the reality of this world._

 _A/N: Ernqvat onpx bire guvf, V ernyyl qvq unir n gnyrag sbe haqrefgngrzrag._

 **Time until start of canon: 2 years**


End file.
